1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an image processing apparatus for electrically processing an image and, more particularly, to an image synthesizing apparatus for synthesizing an image and code data described by a PDL (Page Description Language) to form a composite image.
2. Related Background Art
A conventional apparatus capable of synthesizing an image is an image processing system using a computer. An image read by an image reading device such as a drum scanner is temporarily stored in a large-capacity memory medium such as a magnetic disk, and compressed information is displayed on a display. After characters, graphic patterns, and the like are synthesized, a composite image is printed on a film or paper at an image output device such as a drum scanner. An interpreter for a such as Post Script available from Adobe Systems Inc. can be mounted in the above apparatus. In addition, an image can be generated from code data.
In a conventional printing image processing system, an input/output device is a bulky and expensive drum scanner, and a memory medium such as a large-capacity disk is required.
When an image such as an illustration or a photograph is synthesized with a character string represented by the page description language, and the composite image is reproduced, the density of the image is represented by numerical data, and the numerical data must be programmed as a PDL program. These operations are time-consuming, and numerical data representing the image is large in volume. As a result, the PDL program becomes very long, and its processing time is undesirably prolonged.
A volume of data of a halftone image or a full-color image is large. This image is not suitable to be expressed by numerical data.